Some reasons are bitterly practical and political. Though musicians had long been aware of his powerfully original ideas and performances, it wasn’t until a 1957 gig, at the Five Spot, in the East Village-where his main sideman was the saxophonist John Coltrane-that his central place in modern artistic life became widely acknowledged. Those musicians, and others in their circle, recorded copiously, starting in 1945, but Monk’s recorded output remained scant until the nineteen-fifties. Yet, while those musicians also had jobs with famous big bands, Monk-the house pianist at Minton’s-was composing, theorizing, and mentoring. He was one of the prime creators- the creator, he said-of modern jazz, i.e., bebop, alongside Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, in the early nineteen-forties, most famously at jam sessions at a Harlem club called Minton’s. Monk, a pianist and composer, was fifty-one at the time of the concert. The album, scheduled for release in July from Impulse Records, was delayed, reportedly owing to contractual issues it will now be released on September 18th, on CD and vinyl by Impulse and digitally by Sony Legacy. “Palo Alto,” a new release of a previously unissued concert recording of Thelonious Monk and his quartet, from 1968, embodies some of the vexing paradoxes of his majestic artistry and his radically influential career.
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